1. Gentlemen, if you still have any doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant, give me leave to suggest to you what circumstances you ought to consider, in order to found your verdict. You should consider the character of the person accused; and in this your task is easy. I will venture to say there is not a man in this nation more known than the gentleman who is the subject of this prosecution; not only by the part he has taken in public concerns, and which he has taken in common with many, but still more so by that extraordinary sympathy for human affliction, which, I am sorry to think, he shares with so small a number.

2. There is not a day that you hear the cries of your starving manufacturers in your streets, that you do not, also, see the advocate of their sufferings; that you do not see his honest and manly figure, with uncovered head, soliciting for their relief, searching the frozen heart of charity for every string that can be touched by compassion, and urging the force of every argument and every motive, save that which his modesty suppresses, the authority of his own generous example.

3. Or, if you see him not there, you may trace his steps to the private abodes of disease, and famine, and despair, the messenger of Heaven, bringing with him food, and medicine, and consolation. Are these the materials of which you suppose anarchy and public rapine to be formed? Is this the man on whom to fasten the abominable charge of goading on a frantic populace to mutiny and bloodshed? Is this the man likely to apostatize from every principle that can bind him to the state, his birth, his property, his education, his character, and his children?

4. Let me tell you, gentlemen of the jury, if you agree with his prosecutors, in thinking that there ought to be a sacrifice `of such a man, on such an occasion, and upon the credit of such evidence, you are to convict him; never did you, never can you give a sentence, consigning any man to public punishment, with less danger to his person or to his fame.

5. I will not relinquish the confidence that this day will be the period of my client's sufferings; and that, however mercilessly he has been hitherto pursued, your verdict will send him home to the arms of his family, and the wishes of his country. But if, (which Heaven forbid!) it hath still been unfortunately determined, that, because he has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow down before the golden calf, and worship it, he is to be bound and cast into the furnace, I do trust in God, that there is a redeeming spirit in the Constitution, which will be seen to walk with the sufferer through the flames, and to preserve him unhurt by the conflagration!

LESSON LIX.

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH OF MR. FOX.a

1. Freedom, according to my conception of it, consists in the safe and sacred possession of a man's property, governed by laws defined and certain; with many personal privileges, natural, civil, and religious, which he cannot surrender without ruin to himself, and of which, to be deprived by any other

power, is

Fox, (Charles James,) was born in January, 1749. In 1768, he became a member of parliament, and died in September, 1806. This speech, relating to the affairs of the British East-India Company, was delivered in parliament in 1783. A volume of nearly one thousand pages, of parliamentary speeches, has recently been compiled by Chauncey A. Goodrich, D. D., professor in Yale college, and published by Harper & Brothers. It is a work of great value, for those who desire to study models of forensic and parliamentary eloquence.

despotism. This bill, instead of subverting, is destined to establish these principles; instead of narrowing the basis of freedom, it tends to enlarge it; instead of suppressing, its object is to infuse and disseminate the spirit of liberty.

2. What is the most odious species of tyranny? Precisely that which this bill is meant to annihilate. That a handful of men, free themselves, should exercise the most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation; in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism, unmatched in all the histories of the world.

3. What is the end of all government? Certainly, the happiness of the governed. Others may hold different opinions; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. What then are we to think of a government, whose good fortune is supposed to spring from the calamities of its subjects, whose aggrandizement grows out of the miseries of mankind? This is the kind of government exercised under the East-India Company upon the natives of Hindoostan; and the subversion of that infamous government, is the main object of the bill in question.

LESSON LX.

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH OF MR. MACKINTOSH. 1. Believing, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great struggle; that this is only the first battle between reason and power; that you have now in your hands, committed to your

Mackintosh, (James,) was born in Scotland, 1765, and died in 1832. He was a man of much learning, and an able advocate. This extract is the close of his speech

trust, the only remains of free discussion in Europe, now confined to this kingdom,-addressing you, therefore, as the guardians of the most important interests of mankind; convinced that the unfettered exercise of reason depends more on your present verdict, than on any other that was ever delivered by a jury, I cannot conclude, without bringing before you the sentiments and examples of our ancestors, in some of those awful and perilous situations by which Divine Providence has, in former ages, tried the virtue of the English nation. We are fallen upon times in which it behooves us to strengthen our spirits by the contemplation of great examples of constancy. Let us seek for them in the annals of our forefathers.

2. The reign of Queen Elizabethb may be considered as the opening of the modern history of England, especially in its connection with the modern system of Europe, which began about that time to assume the form that it preserved till the French Revolution. It was a very memorable period, of which the maxims ought to be engraven on the head and heart of every Englishman.

3. Philip II., at the head of the greatest empire then in the world, was openly aiming at universal domination. To the most extensive and opulent dominions, the most numerous and well disciplined armies, the most renowned captains, the greatest revenue, he added, also, the most formidable power over opinion.

4. Elizabeth was among the first objects of his hostility. That wise and magnanimous princess, placed herself in the front of the battle for the liberties of Europe. Her only effectual ally was the spirit of her people, and her policy flowed

in behalf of Mr. Peltier, for a libel on Napoleon Bonaparte, and was delivered in the court of King's Bench in 1803.

• Elizabeth, (Queen,) see p. 28. b Philip II., king of Spain, and son of Charles V., was born in 1527.

from that magnanimous nature, which in the hour of peril, teaches better lessons than those of cold reason.

5. Her great heart inspired her with a higher and a nobler wisdom, which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid passions of her people, even for the protection of their low and sordid interests, because she knew, or rather she felt, that these are effeminate, creeping, cowardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink from conflict, even in defense of their own mean objects.

6. In a righteous cause, she roused those generous affections of her people, which alone teach boldness, constancy, and foresight, and which are, therefore, the only safe guardians of the lowest, as well as the highest interests of a nation. In her memorable address to her army, when the invasion of the kingdom was threatened by Spain, this woman of heroic spirit disdained to speak to them of their ease, and their commerce, and their wealth, and their safety.

7. No! she touched another chord. She spoke of their dignity as Englishmen, of "the foul scorn, that Parmaa or Spain should dare to invade the borders of her realms." She breathed into them those grand and powerful sentiments which exalt vulgar men into heroes, which led them into the battle of their country, armed with holy and irresistible enthusiasm; which even cover with their shield, all the ignoble interests, that base calculation and cowardly selfishness tremble to hazard, but shrink from defending.

a Parma, a duchy in upper Italy.